UpFront Speaker Bursary

The team behind Upfront Conf and Upfront mini; the conferences for Front-End developers and designers are working on increasing the reach and diversity of the UpFront events and for 2016 are focusing on addressing the gender gap.

It is a widely acknowledged fact that there are not enough women speakers at tech conferences. It is important that event organisers play their part to redress this imbalance and help women to develop the confidence to take to the stage and share their knowledge with their peers and colleagues.

UpFront Conf, in partnership with Manchester Digital are offering 5 women developers the chance to enhance their public speaking skills with bespoke training and support which will lead to a 300 second speaking slot at UpFront Conf, taking place on May 27th at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, in front of a 300-strong audience.

We don’t expect you to have a full talk ready to go; we’ll work with you to get the content right and to help you put it together.

Eligibility

This opportunity is open to women, and is inclusive of trans women and other underrepresented genders, working in the Front-End development & design community in the North West of England. We ask that you have had limited public speaking practice (with no prior major speaking engagements). Your talk must be relevant to the community and the audience.

In terms of time commitment, there will be a Skype call with the Upfront team to assess your eligibility and then further support with preparation as well as a one-day training course which will take place on Friday 22nd April 2016. You must be able to attend the training course.

Applications

The Upfront Steering Group will screen all the applications and will select the 5 successful participants.